Simulation of polarized optical speckle fields: effects of the observation scale on polarimetry

In this paper, we propose the simulation of polarized speckle fields using the Stokes formalism, which allows the description of partially polarized electromagnetic waves. We define a unique parameter which determines the partial decorrelation of the involved fields, allowing to simulate the polarized speckles produced by all types of scatterers, from simple to multiple scatterers. We validate this model by comparison with experimental measurements. We use that simulation model to study the impact of the imaging device parameters on polarimetric measurements: first we emphasize a limit of resolution on retardance measurements, then we study the spatial depolarization, which appears when an observer is measuring any space-variant polarization map.